8.32 p.m.
AS OFFICERS ATTENDED MR CADOGAN with Adam Booth, other uniformed police breached Russet Lodge’s front door with CID. Delahaye and Lines sprinted after Gibson as she led them through the garden to a silver birch copse with a bizarre display of white carousel horses and, as they crowded into the space, they saw the trapdoor. It was clear of earth, its padlocks thrown aside, and light glowed from within. The detectives unclipped their truncheons and, at Delahaye’s nod, Lines opened the hatch.
Tepid electric light glimmered from light bulbs attached to caged fixtures on the walls, and the stink that arose had the force of a punch. A set of concrete steps led twenty feet down into a squalid oubliette. Delahaye silently descended, Lines and Perrin close behind, into a space that had been vacated in a hurry: lights still on, door left unlocked, and items of clothing littering the floor. It was a mundane yet wretched place, separate from the main house – no wonder they’d not discovered it. The walls had peeling paint, exposing the degrading concrete beneath. A bare bulb hung from the low ceiling. There was a camp bed with crumpled sleeping bags, a bare mattress, a small electric heater, a coiled garden hose, and a makeshift kitchen area with worktop, sink, and a kettle. There were no personal possessions. A musky odour hummed in harmony with the light bulb’s buzz. This was where Keith Magaw was held captive, and exactly how he’d described the place.
There was another door: closed, battered, exuding spent Molochian malevolence. A reeking wolf suit of petrol-and-platinum fur and a despicable skull-like mask with leathered pointed ears hung from a hook on the door. There was no lock or latch. From the gap at the bottom spread a broad, dark stain. As Gibson, and uniformed officers, paused halfway down the steps, waiting, Delahaye knocked. No response. He stepped to the side so that anyone armed couldn’t use him as a direct target. At his nod, Lines pulled on the handle and swung it open.
The miasma that pervaded couldn’t compare to the slaughterhouse stench that barged forth to greet them. Delahaye covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, and entered a gore-splashed chamber with screams etched into the walls with the scratch marks. His torch revealed its confined hell as every known behaviour of blood loss splashed the interior: spots, streaks, gobs, spatters, drips and congealed, hardened pools stained the walls and bare floor. Lines’s torch illumined chunks of dried meat in the corner, and he wretched when he saw they were the skeletal remains of Bryan’s fingers.
This was the kill room.
‘Sarge?’ It was PC Daryl Morgan. Delahaye and Lines swiftly vacated the ghastly pit and slammed the door before the young man could see it. ‘We’ve found bloodstains back at the house,’ said Morgan, his eyes on the door.